Airstrikes on Rafah amid renewed efforts to broker Gaza ceasefire talks

At least 22 people have been killed in airstrikes on Rafah, as Hamas and Israel face pressure to engage in what are seen as last-chance ceasefire talks before a threatened Israeli ground invasion into the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip.

Strikes that hit three houses in the city next to the Egyptian border on Monday injured many more people, while in Gaza City, the bombing of two buildings killed another four people and wounded several more, medics said.

The Israeli attacks come amid renewed international efforts to broker a ceasefire in the nearly seven-month-old conflict: a Hamas delegation including the Palestinian militant group’s deputy Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, was expected in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Monday to respond to Israel’s latest truce and hostage release proposal via Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on his seventh visit to the region since the war broke out, is currently in Saudi Arabia and is then expected to visit Israel to discuss the negotiations. About 1,200 Israelis were killed and another 250 taken hostage in Hamas’s 7 October attack. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s ensuing retaliatory operation in Gaza, which has left most of the coastal territory in ruins.

A senior Hamas official said on Sunday that the group had no “major issues” with the most recent truce plan, which in essence remains the same as the deal outlined in several failed rounds of talks since a week-long ceasefire collapsed at the end of November.

In recent days Hamas has broadcast several proof-of-life videos of hostages, a move widely interpreted as a good faith gesture towards mediators. However, an official from the group told Reuters on Monday that “questions and enquiries” remain, suggesting that a response on the latest proposal may not be immediately forthcoming.

Israel’s mounting preparations for a ground operation in Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has sought shelter from the fighting elsewhere, mean this week’s talks may be the last opportunity to salvage a diplomatic solution to free hostages and pause or end the war.

Israel has said that Hamas’s leadership, along with four battalions of fighters, are camped out in Rafah, using Israeli hostages as human shields, and that a ground operation is necessary to achieve the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise of “total victory” over the Palestinian militants and bring the remaining 130 or so hostages home.

But the long-threatened plan to attack Rafah has drawn intense opposition from Israel’s allies, including the US, which says the overcrowded conditions could lead to thousands of civilian casualties as well as further disrupting aid deliveries entering from Egypt. Joe Biden “reiterated his clear” opposition to an invasion of Rafah in a conversation with Netanyahu on Sunday.

The latest ceasefire proposal appears to include compromises from Israel, which is under international and domestic pressure over the fate of the hostages and the humanitarian crisis its war has caused in Gaza.

Israel is reportedly willing to accept the release of fewer than 40 hostages in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, and to a second phase of a truce that includes a “period of sustained calm” – a new response to Hamas’s repeated demand for a permanent ceasefire.

It is also reportedly open to discussing the return of Palestinians to their homes in the northern half of the strip, and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from a central corridor that now divides the territory.

Netanyahu’s ministers have publicly sparred on whether to go forward with a truce, with far-right members of his coalition threatening to quit the government if Israel is seen to “surrender” to Hamas’s demands.